High res maps?

[HAximand]

I'm trying to start Hellknight Hill, running a campaign on Roll20 (because in person isn't an option right now) and I'm struggling with the maps offered by Paizo. The maps included in the book, such as the map of Citadel Altaerein, look pretty pixelated if you zoom in to the scale of a single fight. This is workable but I've been looking for alternatives that make our play feel smoother.

In doing research, I found forum posts such as this one where Paizo has stated that it's prohibitively expensive to make much higher resolution maps for every single area in their adventure paths. I understand and accept this.

However, I looked at some videos of a party playing Age of Ashes on Fantasy Grounds and found that the maps included in that content are visibly sharper than the ones in the Age of Ashes PDFs. If you want to check for yourself, view this timestamp and compare it to the same room in the Hellknight Hill Interactive Maps PDF.

Why are the maps included with a Fantasy Grounds purchase so much sharper than the ones included in a purchase of the book and the interactive maps PDF? I would like to use these in my Roll20 campaign because I prefer it to Fantasy Grounds, but as far as I can tell the only possible way to get these better maps is by buying the Fantasy Grounds module. Why are the maps gated in this way? Am I missing something?

[Joana]

The maps directly from the PDF are much better than the ones in the Interactive Map pack for VTT use. I'm pulling the maps directly out of the Hellknight Hill PDF and using them in MapTool without a problem.

(Note this isn't an argument/explanation for/against/why the way things are, just a practical suggestion for an immediate workaround.)

[ToiletSloth]

In addition, the Community Created Content thread has a bunch of existing maps in the AP recreated at a higher resolution.

[Aswaarg]

It has been discussed in this post recently:

Low resolution post

And we got an answer form James Jacob, here is the last one:

James Jacobs wrote:

Wheels have been kicked and we're looking at ways to get high resolution maps out in a more reliable and efficient manner. And from the office of expectation management: It might take a while to figure it out. It might not even be possible, given the size of these map files and the number of them we've built up over the last 12 years or so for Pathfinder...

In resume: You are not alone, and they are going to to try to do it, but no promises and is going to take a while.

[Joana]

ToiletSloth wrote:

In addition, the Community Created Content thread has a bunch of existing maps in the AP recreated at a higher resolution.

Ooh, yes, there are some really fantastic community-made maps in there! Here is a direct link.